A Mast Without A Sail
by Lindra
Summary: This routine of medicines and spaces is not what you wanted for your son.


This is not what you wanted for your son.

It is 8:30 AM. You fetch an eggcup carved with stars, one of a set that was a wedding gift from your mother, and go up the stairs, counting your steps. You knock and enter, glass in one hand, egg cup balanced in the other.

The water sloshes when you hand it to him, and he blinks up at you. He is awake. He is, more often than not, awake by now. He says he doesn't sleep very well. He says sometimes he sleeps too well and wakes up too early. You have decided it is not something to concern yourself with. He doesn't look tired, and his yawn is cheerful when he sits up.

He sips first from the glass, then tips the edge of the eggcup against his mouth and swallows, gulping the water after them and handing the glass back with a pleased sigh. "Morning, Mama."

"Good morning, Hikaru. There's breakfast on the table. Come down when you're ready."

"Yeah, yeah." He waves a hand and puts it to the back of his mouth, the corners of his eyes narrowing as he struggles to hold it all in. "Yeah," he says. "I'll come."

You go down the stairs, empty objects in your empty hands.

ooo

Your son is always in the kitchen, washed and dressed and eating toast, by 9:10 AM. Sometimes it takes a while. Today it is 8:56 AM and you notice that he does not waver when he stands to get himself more toast, blocking the teakettle, and you are at once pleased and exasperated. "Hikaru!"

He rolls his eyes at you and sits down with a yawn, proceeding to destroy the newspaper. It is a good thing his father has already left for work. He would be furious. You sigh.

"Hikaru -"

"Why can't I just read the newspaper?" He grimaces at you. Crumbs of toast dot the corners of his mouth, and you have to restrain the urge to wipe his lips with the edge of your apron. He is not five years old. He is not ten years old, either. "Mama, just -" He sighs. "Sit down. Please? Eat something. The stove can wait."

You have picked up cloth and detergent without noticing, and you set them aside, replace the cover on top of the burners, and sit down. You stand up again immediately to fetch tea and toast, and you eat in silence. He passes you the sports section; you did always like soccer, and he does too, though you agree on the state of this year's team. FIFA will not be Japan's, this year. (Hikaru thinks they will lose the first round. You think the second. You have always been the optimist.)

"Can I, can I say something?"

You decide. "Yes."

Hikaru nods, shifts, shrugs. "Okay. I - He - I haven't been sleeping so much. He keeps wanting me to play, and I can't, he looks so sad." He shrugs again, helplessly. "But he says he always makes sure I sleep really well when I do, so - so if -"

He does not say the name of the other. Your agreement only goes so far; there are shades of your son's reality you do not ever decide to handle. Hikaru has said, often, that he does not blame you.

"Hikaru," you say. Then you say again, "Hikaru," and pour him a second cup of tea. It is slightly more caffeine than recommended, in the mornings, but you have learned there is a little leeway if it will please your son. "Does it help?"

He considers this. You have watched him learn to think for himself through it all, though it grieved you to know it was so difficult. "Sometimes. It makes him happy. I don't know yet if I like playing. It's so. You know."

You know, and you pass him the third slice of toast, and the butter. "Don't stay up too late."

"I know, I know," he groans. "Curfew."

Curfew is 11 PM. You have caught him awake and playing before. He has never looked quite so eager to stop as when you take the stones out of his hands and set the caps upon their bowls, laying them to rest on top of the board. It is necessary if you do not wish him to be out of your sight for longer than you are comfortable with. It is necessary if he does not wish to be reevaluated.

In this, you agree, and you are saddened, once again, that the time you find an accord is when he is most divided; his maturity has come at such expense. You do not know if you would have preferred him any other way. You think you do, but you are not quite sure.

He looks happy, you decide, and you can live with that.

ooo

Touya Akira is allowed to visit on the third Thursday of every month. This Thursday morning he is standing on your doorstep at 9:15 AM, the time you have arranged between yourselves, and you smile, greet him, and remind him to take off his tie and shoes before he comes inside. He does and you let him in, calling over your shoulder.

The atmosphere in the house changes, and Hikaru's smile is strained, his eyes shadowed. "Hey, Touya." He waves at a bowl of cereal. "Want some? You didn't eat, did you? Or maybe you got up way too early and had something disgustingly healthy." He ponders that while Touya Akira sits down opposite him, posture perfect, and nods at you when you hold up six fingers. An hour is the most you can allow. You wonder if letting this boy disturb your son, month after month, is wise.

"Hikaru," you say. "Don't be rude."

"He's been around the group," your son says, indifferent. "He's heard it before." He frowns. "Haven't you? You are kind of straight-laced, maybe it just went over your head or something ..."

Touya Akira flushes and darts a look at you. You begin to make tea. "Shindou," he hisses. "I am not that naive."

You suppose he wouldn't be.

He did find your son half-dead in the kifu storeroom at the Tokyo Go Association, after all.

You set down tea and snacks between them and smile. "Hikaru, remember to take these if you go up to your room. And call me if you need anything, either of you."

Hikaru groans and slants her meaningful looks. "Mama."

"Of course, Shindou-san," Touya Akira says, unfazed by his friend's embarrassing mother. "It's very kind of you."

"Not at all," you say, and you go to do laundry. You like the rhythm and cycle of it, and you can have a load and a half done in the time allotted.

"Mama," your son yells through the house at 9:47 AM. "Make him go away."

You come as soon as you can, setting the cycle and wiping your hands of powder. You had spilled some, wondering how their conversations went, wondering again if your son resented you for this. "Hikaru, don't be rude!" you say again, running upstairs, and you look up from the landing to see Touya Akira hovering in the hallway, his expression a mix between furious and helpless.

You nod to him, smiling, and look past him into the room. Your son is kneeling before the board, stones scattered on the floor, the goban clear of all but thirteen hands. You cannot see his eyes, but you can see the tears, the fists his hands make on his knees, how they shake. He is not in immediate danger.

"Please leave," you say to Touya Akira, and bow a little. "I apologise for the inconvenience."

"Not at all," he whispers, and he looks at your son, then at you, and shakes his head. "Next time," he says, and the only emotion in his too-expressive eyes is guilt. "If he wants me here. I am truly sorry, Shindou-san. I didn't think - I thought -"

"We'll see," you say, and you pat him on the shoulder and see him off at the door. "He'll be all right."

Touya Akira gives you a long, level look, as if to remind you that you are lying, and his walk is slow, the swing of his crisply-cut hair troubled.

When you come inside, your son is filling a bucket with water, and he is wearing your garden gloves. "I can't do it," he says. "I couldn't."

You kiss his temple and he leans into you for a moment before flinching away with a cold shudder, as always, and you spare a moment of heavy hatred before you take the slow climb upstairs, your knees creaking. You kneel beside the upturned board and begin to pick up stones, smooth and cold in your hands, and set them to rights: the board is to be aligned this way, like this, and the bowls will be in the center. Black stones in this bowl, white stones in the other. Never mix the two. No broken stones, for safety and security.

There are few stones left intact now, and you do not have the heart to buy him another set.

It is 10:31 AM when your son stops shaking.

ooo

You had a feeling. That was all it was. You had a feeling, and you listened at his door, and you heard him speak. You heard his shouts, his denials, his refusals, his broken silences. You heard how none of it helped, and you saw his sleeplessness, and you asked.

He did not tell you at first, but you are his mother and he is your son and eventually, on a night when he was chilly and resentful in your arms, shaking in fear of the terrible ticking of the clock, he told you.

About Go, and gobans, and Sai.

You didn't understand, at first. You wanted to know if he was making it up; if it was a lie; if it was imagination. But Heihachi told you, white-faced and stunned, that there was no imagination which could create skill like that. Since then you have wondered if your son is a genius, if you are stifling him with your medicine and your schedule and your orderly, protective routines.

Since then, you do not speak of your son to your father, not where he can hear. Heihachi has never looked at you, or your son, quite the same, and you think some part of him had hoped to have a grandson to teach, not a boy to hide his trophies from. It is only when you and he are alone sharing tea, and your son is in the yard, that he speaks of Go to you, to help you understand your son a little better.

What you learn does not reassure you.

Your father speaks of strategy and mind and spirit; you think it all sounds very much like some kind of endless war, ceaseless and unforgiving, climaxing at the mercy of a god more interested in slaughter, and you would say it was bloodless if you did not know otherwise.

ooo

At first you supported him, though with confusion. You took him to the insei test. You let him have the goban. You let him take time from his studies to play Go instead. You allowed his trips, his outings with the excuse of learning Go, his visits to salons, his new obsession. You thought it wouldn't do any harm, that it was good for him, if strange, that it was a sign he was growing up from a child who thought playing soccer was everything there was.

You thought wrong, but as you are his mother, you are also often wrong. It has come to be the price you pay for raising a child like Hikaru. For raising a child at all.

ooo

The first thing, of course, was that your son began to be secretive, reluctant to speak, reluctant to look at you, always staring to the side and whispering to himself, words you couldn't quite hear. But, convinced he was insulting you, you told him to stop, that you were a good mother, and he said "But he's -" and looked away again, guilty.

These days you know he was never speaking to you, even when you were seated across from him with breakfast and tea while he stared a little over your shoulder, even before Sai was there too, and so it is easier to bear.

Your son simply does not think very much of you. He has tried a little, but he simply doesn't.

You never thought very much of your own father, either. You tell your son that relationships with your parents almost always improve when you move out, and he scratches his head. "Waya said that too," he admits, and catches himself, guilty.

ooo

At 12 noon exactly he comes in from the garden, stares at the egg cup in your hand, and seems to briefly consider smashing it. You are used to this. He takes it and drains it of pills that clatter when he tosses them into his mouth like coins.

"I'll hang the washing," he says, and goes out again, tracking dirt through the kitchen on his shoes, and you sigh and tell him to wipe his feet. He doesn't listen to you, of course; he never does, and you have learned that this is a child-thing, not a Sai-thing. It, apparently, would never do such a thing, and your child does it to irk you both.

You have caught yourself feeling kinship towards the creature that haunts your son, and it trips you, startles you that you are being convinced, little by little, of its existence. You know there is something. You do not know if there is anything you can do against it; perhaps there isn't.

Still, you take him his medication, and he takes it, and accepts your care for what it is. Grudgingly, but he accepts it.

You would ask him to go to school, if he would go. But he wouldn't, and won't, and so you don't. He has already graduated middle school; what would be the point of high school? It was never as though he intended to go.

There are less pointless things, like cleaning the floor of mud.

ooo

It has been May the 5th.

This is the day when it left your son and blazed disaster in its wake, and you are always careful, so careful. You are careful to touch him only when he wishes to be touched, and to disturb him only when he wishes to be disturbed, and to comfort him only when he wishes you to.

He has told you it never did that for him; it never left when he wanted, and it never stayed away. How could it, when it was a ghost, a possession, a figment?

You are kindest in your absence. You hate it for this.

ooo

Hikaru lies in bed. You watch him from the doorway. The goban is to your left, the window to your right. It is open. Neither of you move.

"He's gone," your child says. "I guess. He's gone, and I'm here." He sighs and studies his hand, his playing hand. "I miss him." Hikaru glances at you. "Is that - is that okay?"

"Yes," you say. You are not so cruel. "What do you miss, Hikaru?"

"Him, I guess. He was so enthusiastic about Go. About everything. It felt like he'd be here forever, you know? And then he wasn't." You can see tears. "He just wasn't here. And he's not coming back, is he? I don't - I don't need him anymore. Do I?"

His expression is a study in the concentration and distillation of despair. You go to him, obeying instinct, and he sits up and buries his face in your shoulder.

"I'm good enough now, Touya says." He sniffles. "I can rival him on my own. I can play him, right? I don't need Sai. I just, I just have to play. But sometimes I think maybe if I don't play he'll come back." Your son's voice breaks.

You are faced with a decision you never thought you would need to make.

"I," and you stop and pat his back. "I." How can you decide this? How can he ask you to decide this?

But you are his mother, and he is still your son, and he has been gone for so long. "Why don't you try?" you say. "Just to see."

"You don't know anything about Go," he says. It isn't unkind, merely puzzled. You do not say your father has been teaching you and still you do not understand. You do not say your father has advised that Hikaru is beyond you. You do not say that Go still tastes of bloodshed whenever you witness the pieces: you think of their names, their families, their loyalties, and you would dismiss it as fantasy if only for the intensity with which your son plays.

You wonder if Hikaru thinks of their names, and you do not say that either.

"It used to make you happy," you say. "I don't know, Hikaru." You still don't quite understand Go. "Could it?"

"I don't know," he says. "Maybe?"

"Maybe," you echo.

He looks happier with your permission than he's been in a long, long time, and you wonder if you really mean this much to him: could anyone have said this, and been believed, simply because your son wanted to?

He is so very good at believing, and you stroke his hair while he darts increasingly uncertain glances toward the goban. "Mama?"

"Yes, Hikaru?"

"Do you want - I could teach you," he offers, awkward, as your son ever is, and you feel a rush of affection despite your misgivings.

"I don't know very much," you warn, and he pulls back, rubbing tears from his eyes, and crawls on the floor toward the goban, sitting before it in the cross-legged manner of an insolent brat. The look in his eyes is very kind.

You seat yourself opposite him, acutely aware that his kindness is not meant for you, and you listen as his hands and voice shake over the stones.

ooo

The first time Hikaru plays again, it is with a friend from the go school. Insei, your son tells you, Isumi Shinichirou, and he is dragged upstairs by this tall dark serious-faced boy, and you put your hand to your mouth, concerned. But when you bring tea this boy has none of the sharp viciousness of Touya Akira, and you give him a smile that is careful and properly welcoming.

Your son is crying, but he does not look as though he wishes touch, so you do not touch him. You close the door and leave to scrub the burners on the stove, careful and quiet.

It has been a year. A year since he has touched the goban without flinching, body and mind, so badly that he couldn't continue.

A year.

This is the happiest you've seen him since, despite the tears, and so you leave him, and them, be.

ooo

Your son smiles at you for once, and suggests that perhaps the specific medications to help him sleep aren't needed anymore. You counter, and so you debate over breakfast which is best: increased risk of nightmares, increased risk of psychosis?

It is difficult to think your son is healed. He is not. You know this, as well as he does not know it himself.

But you are his mother, and you greet Touya Akira and Waya Yoshitaka, and you serve them tea and biscuits, and you watch the slow, careful healing with a wary eye.

ooo

Your son is not recovered. Perhaps he never will be. But he attempts kindness, and there is a peace in the fan he clutches, even if it is its, the figment's, and he had a dream of him - and who are you to begrudge him that last bit of contentment?

Who are you, really?

You are a woman once confronted by a ghost in a tall hat whom you could not hear, when you were a very young girl. Your concern was never the process; your concern, and rightly so, was the aftermath. For his cruelties, for his obsessions, you think you could have liked Sai of the Fujiwara had he been a little kinder to your son.

However you know him, the facts remain: you are Mitsuko, Shindou Hikaru's mother, and so you shall always be. But he doesn't need you to feed him his medicine, or unclench his hands from the stones. It is a welcome pain. Hikaru's maturity is his own, now, and you can finally be proud in small doses and stages of your own: how he grows, how he matures, how he learns not to count time, how he learns to overlook the hourglasses consuming even the infinity of Go.

And he teaches you, and as you touch him, so he heals, and so his grip upon the fan, the last remaining sign of sorrow, loosens.

And so you are proud of your son, Shindou Hikaru. And so you do not need to know Go well, its intricacies, its small weights upon the scales of victory, to smile at his freed happiness, and bid him a good game all of his own choosing.


End file.
